There no fastpath, I started using HLSL (microsoft way) in forward rendering in 2010, just messing around modding shaders.
Shaders rely heavily on engine inputs, like specific matrices and attributes. Alltho HLSL and GLSL are somewhat similar (syntax vary abit, float3 in hlsl is vec3 in glsl, saturate in hlsl is clamp in glsl, lerp is mix , hlsl uses mul while glsl just use * ..and so on..)
Vertex shaders are computed per vertex while fragment shader are per pixel.
I'd think learning forward rendering first would be better since you get a understanding of how lightning works.
Leadwerks 3.0 is a forward renderer (start here) or use opengl, Leadwerks 2.X and 3.1 are deferred (where all lighting is done for you in a prepass)
Sorry not very helpful, but it is what it is..